This is why Europe has failed to become an America in the immigrantion context! America is unique that way and exceptional that way. In a crunch for skilled workers, Germany tried to do what America did by offering green cards to immigrant skilled workers a few years ago but there were not many takers. Because there was no path to citizenship and full assimilation and their program failed quite miserably.

The French are much nastier to their immigrants on a day to day basis than American society is to its immigrants. At least, that's my personal experience, but I'm certain open to dissenting opinions.

The real difference, and the real reason for the despair, is that there's just no upward mobility for many of the immigrant "youts", unlike here.

If you look at the cars in the parking lot at a DC area mosque, you see that these folks are doing fairly well. They've got something to lose. The French immigrant community? They're on the dole, and know there's no way up & out.

Money is a great social lubricant, and there;'s just more of it moving around in the US.

Little more than a week later, the French authorities say they have grown doubtful of his claims to terrorist ties, though questions remain about how Mr. Merah, an unemployed 23-year-old of Algerian descent, acquired a large cache of firearms and $26,000 in cash.

You gotta love those French authorities. So skeptical. An unemployed 23 year old with $26k and a closet full of guns who guns down Jews and says he's a terrorist really isn't.

"..If you look at the cars in the parking lot at a DC area mosque, you see that these folks are doing fairly well.."

If you look at the cars in any parking lot in DC, you will see that these folks are doing well. Lots of Mercedes, BMWs, Lexus, etc. DC is doing very well, it's the rest of the country that is taking it in the shorts. (it's off-topic but my visits to DC rile me when I see its prosperity while the rest of the US is scraping by)

"Investigators have been left to puzzle over Mr. Merah’s motivations."

Rebuilding the liberal cocoon tout suite!

As for Europe, I disagree with the comments about widespread ill treatment. My Dutch friend has many Muslim friends, but they have renounced radicalism. They would have voted for Pim Fortuyn! As in our inner cities, bad culture creates bad outcomes. Sure it's hard to adapt to a new culture, but it's not all racism.

It's quite easy to point your finger and blame the new culture (France or DC or wherever) for your feelings of disinfranchised. Remember, in doing so, there are also three fingers pointing back at you.

The problem in France is two fold. The French don't have a track record of assimilation. AND Arrivals coming from the former French colonies are for the most part Muslims. Muslims aren't into asimilation. They fight it. Their religion is about conquest and colonization, not assimilation.

When these two cultural facts bump heads in France you get the Ghetto's where "youths" rule by night and even fire trucks cant travel.

Given the native French and colonist birth rates, they are totally hosed.

PS: Only the NYT would presume to lecture us on the shooters rookie choices in weapons. Trust me, if you want to ride up to somebody on a scooter and reach over and blow their brains out, there is nothing better than one of those antique M1911A1 45 Cal pistols.

"Our passports may say that we are French, but we don’t feel French because we are never accepted here."

So, in response, we are going to go out and kill some Jews!

So sadly typical. We've seen this kind of thing in the US too, as in the LA riots, where Black rioters allegedly upset about white policemen abusing a Black suspect decided to take their anger out on Koreans. People often try to justify that kind of violent racism through a sense of victimisation or historical grievance, but it rarely makes any sense when you look closely -- it's a post hoc rationalization for their race hate, not the actual cause.

I can accept the fact that he felt disenfranchised, put upon, and hated. How does that translate into killing children? Only terrorist kill children. Period. Dot. End of sentence.

And yes, I am including all pro-abortionist. To kill a baby because it's inconvenient is despicable. The only innocent in the whole business is the baby.

In cases of incestuous rape, there are 2 innocent lives lost. Execute the father, and provide such comfort as the children should ever need.

(child molestation is one of the few things I can agree to corporal punishment on) Adults usually get what they deserve.

OT...I saw a flyer for "Justice for Trayvon" yesterday.(did I just infringe on his Moms copywrite?) It called for the killing of G. Zimmerman. Yeah, that's justice alright. Make up your minds to fit your stereotypes before all the facts are in.

Though it does not in the least justify subsequent actions, there's a very deep truth in the headline comment. French-ness can come only through le sang -- the blood -- and not by adoption or even birth.

This is almost incomprehensible to an American because our entire nation is founded upon an idea. If you accept the idea, you're one of us.

When in France I'm always taken for a native speaker of the language, though they always comment on my Quebec accent. I could live there, and even become a citizen, but even so I would never, ever, be accepted as "French."

Not every immigrant to the States will assimilate well, especially in the first generation, but they can (and will be) accepted into the American experience.

Many grandchildren of Algerians (and Algeria was a department of France, not a colony, until 1962) are to this day excluded, rejected and insulted ... commonly with the term noirot ("little black boy").

“It was not Al Qaeda that created Mohammed Merah,” he said. “It was France.”

Klaus: It's a fair cop, but society is to blame.

Detective Parson: We'll arresting him, too.

Worthless pulpits like the New York Times (Yes, worthless. I wouldn't insult a perfectly good fish by wrapping it in the NYT.) have been ponying up this decrepit canard since at least the 1950s when the psychobabble term juvenile delinquent became fashionable. At virtually the same instant civil rights and desegregation were also to the forefront, and the national scolds were quick to tell us that greater civilization which is France was very much our moral superior in matters of race and ethnicity.

I could go on and on, but why bother? NYT, the Nation, the NYRB are just a bunch thoughtless bovines, a collection of journalistic prey animals whose reaction to stimuli are as predictable and stereotyped as that of any antelope herd on the veldt.

Did it occur to anyone at the Times that their reporters were being gamed by Islamists attempting to finesse a propaganda win from the ruins of Merah's terrorist career?

Yes the French are terrible to these immigrants but not so terrible that they chose to leave. Funny most of these Muslim immigrants are dual ( and their childred) citizens and can always return to their homelands but somehow they find a reason to stay.

Working in the UK, I mentioned one time the verifiable fact that Muslims, like Gay men, out-earn native born Americans.

He first assumed I meant Indians, and was shocked when I told him no, regular old Americans born here.

YOu have to remember though that this is a conflict that has gone on for 1200 years, with Islamic slave traders buying European slaves off the Vikings, or taking them themselves through piracy on the Mediterranean.

There is a reasonable case to be made that Muslims destroyed the post Roman late antiquity, plunging Europe into a dark age.

These kinds of clashes of civilization don't just go away because people wish they would. The French crescent roll (Croissant) is a celebration of a victory over a Muslim army's attempt to sack Vienna.

You don't think there are people in America that have a problem with legal Muslim immigrants? Who, for example, protest when they try to build mosques in the community. Which happened in multiple places, not just New York.

As the dominant privileged class in America, any alienation that Christians feel is there own paranoia and persecution complex.

Yes and they are so dominant that school graduation speakers can talk about pretty much everything except God.

They pray publically! How offensive! They need to shut up when the ACLU doesn't want to hear them. I sure thats what "freedom of religion" and "free speech rights" means: when non-believers want them to shut up, they better shut up. Praying isn't free speech. Nor the exercise of religion.

Funny most of these Muslim immigrants are dual ( and their childred) citizens and can always return to their homelands but somehow they find a reason to stay.

As a practical matter, their children may be unable to return to and function in the land of their ancestors. They may not know the language at an adult level (or any level at all, even). They may not be familiar with the culture and customs.

And those who are the most disaffected are perhaps even worse off. They may lack the discipline, deference, or industry that would be expected of them were they to move to their parents' homelands. They may have become accustomed to Western forms of government support (welfare) and deference (multiculturalism, though not in France) which would not be available to them in their ancestral homes. They may have become part of subcultures, or developed habits of petty criminality which could get them in serious trouble in short order. Even if they have some sort of gauzy emotional tie to the land of their ancestors, I doubt many of them could last long if they moved there for good. Not none, to be sure. But not many.